People St is pleased to announce the release of the Broadway Dress Rehearsal Existing Conditions Report. Evaluation efforts like this are integral to the City’s Great Streets initiative, and facilitate implementation and benchmarking of LADOT’s Strategic Plan and the City’s Mobility Plan 2035.

Evaluation Methodology

LADOT is committed to understanding and reporting on how projects impact neighborhoods, and evaluating their overall effectiveness in achieving project goals. By using established metrics that illuminate how new public spaces and street design impact the life of the street, we can track trends over time, evaluate project performance, and inform future program direction.

People St has developed a robust methodology for pre- and post-installation evaluation and data collection: the People St Project Evaluation Manual and Fieldwork Toolset. [PDF] This document contains our standard approaches to methodical observations and data gathering at project sites, both before and after installation. Analysis of these data allow us to describe changes in safety, mobility, accessibility, and economic vitality. We also capture perceptions of the neighborhood and the project itself from people walking or bicycling in the project area and local business operators.

A New Milestone Reached with the Broadway Dress Rehearsal

This report offers an in-depth look at safety, public life and economic indicators existing prior to the installation of the Broadway Dress Rehearsal. Data were collected starting in January 2014, just in advance of the project’s installation, which was completed in August.

Here is a preview of some of the interesting findings from this snapshot of Broadway taken before the installation of the Dress Rehearsal project:

• Pedestrians generally outnumber vehicles on Broadway. There were more people walking along Broadway over the course of just 6 hours than motor vehicles traveling along the corridor over a 24 hour period on the same weekend day.

• From 2007 to 2012, 120 intersection and 94 midblock injury collisions were reported along Broadway (involving people driving, walking and bicycling).

-Pedestrian and bicycle injury collisions have been increasing.–Most midblock collisions were caused by unsafe lane changes and unsafe speed by drivers.

• Excessive driver speeding behavior was observed. Almost one-quarter of drivers were speeding heading southbound on Broadway on the weekday studied.

What’s Next?

A corresponding post-installation study (under separate cover) will be conducted in Fall 2015 to compare the existing conditions reported in this document with those observed after the project has been in place for a year.

Hungry for more data? LADOT has also been conducting pre-installation data collection around the seven plaza and parklet projects approved earlier in 2014 under the first-ever application cycle of the People St program. Stay tuned for even more data from People St!

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People St would like to thank our colleagues in our LADOT Survey Division who participated in vehicular volume and speed capture, and the consultant team who worked tirelessly on this groundbreaking effort for LADOT.